JerryvonKramer

Does anyone know of any footage of Renesto? I know he has a rep as being great on the mic, but was he a good worker too? Anyone ever seen the original Assassins in a match?

The only things I remember about Ted as a colour guy is 1. He put himself over quite a lot during the Rumble 94 PPV, 2. He marked out worse than David Crockett for that Undertaker casket match against Yokozuna Despite being the biggest DiBiase fan in the known universe, I even think he's somewhat overrated as a promo. He was never anything more than solid on the mic. He just had fantastic charisma, especially with that character. Probably a better actor than he was a promo. Right now I'd happily say someone like Ole Anderson was a better promo than DiBiase.

In my TEW2008 Death of the Territories game I've been playing the same MSW career for what seems like years now. It's 1987 (starts in 1983) and Lex Luger is currently my World Champ on a 62-0 winning streak since his debut. He has A* popularity in all my key regions. And even with that, he still puts on quite shitty matches.

Just trying to get my head around WWF TV from this timeframe. So they had Superstars, which was your traditional A-show, hosted by Vince and Jesse, with all your major matches and angles. Mostly jobber matches. They had Challenge, which was more of the same but more mid-card level, hosted by Monsoon and Heenan. It was enough of a show to have The Snake Pit as a regular feature. Mostly jobber matches. Then they had Prime-Time, which was mainly Monsoon and Heenan messing about in the studio and recaps, with the odd house show or old MSG match thrown in for good measure (seems like sometimes they would show stuff from 3-4 months ago). On the one hand, a lot of recaps, on the other a lot of original content (Monsoon and Heenan in the studio) and a more star vs. star matches, even if they were usually meaningless and old house shows ones. Just before this they also had Tuesday Night Titans which was a talk-show format hosted by Vince with Lord Alfred Hayes there too, but that was more skits like the famous Hogan and Hayes milkshake one. Let's say Prime Time largely replaced TNT. So what, they had THREE major shows on national TV? What I can't help think about here is Monsoon and Heenan's schedules. They did two shows a week? Plus Heenan was somehow on the road as a manager, so how did he do that? Monsoon also did all those televised house shows from MSG, Boston and Philly. And all the PPVs. He must have knackered. Compared to that, Ventura only did one show a week and the occasional SNME or PPV. And by 86 did Vince do anything outside of Superstars? (naturally, he was busy elsewhere)

What about Jim Cornette for this?

Here's what I think: You get announcers that are great at big PPV shows and big-time angles and you get ones that are great at nothing TV shows. Gorilla Monsoon, who I know a lot of people here don't like, he was a big-time PPV guy and in that context he worked. He was less good at your nothing TV show, where it's obvious he's going through the motions and relying on his stock lines to get him through. Dusty, as Jingus said, is better on your nothing TV show than on your big-time PPV show. I mean the nothing TV B-show or even C-show is an interesting area. I think that *even* Sean Mooney and Lord Alfred Hayes have a role to play there. Mooney and Hayes could be pretty entertaining during like Hercules vs Scott Casey. Maybe you want those guys there talking shit than your A-show team selling the main angles of the day as the match goes on.

So was it just Dusty and Bobby Heenan that didn't work? Really brings those 1995 PPVs down for me. Announcing is something that can just ruin things for me if it's not good. One of the things I'm slightly worried about going into the AWA set. I've come to like David Crockett though, so anything is possible.

I'm going mainly on his Doc Hendrix stuff and I wasn't a fan. I only got up to 85 on the Mid-South set so I guess if his best stuff was in UWF I'm missing that (and WCCW). With Dusty, I can't help but feel that the three-man announce team was a clusterfuck, Tony not getting Dusty, Tony not getting Bobby, Bobby and Dusty not getting each other. Terrible stuff in 95, just awful.

Just seems like no one can really do it apart from Ventura. Heenan worked as a more comedy colour man, but most guys just bomb in that role. Michael Hayes wasn't a good announcer. Piper wasn't very good. Lawler was/ is barely adequate. Guess one thing you need is intelligence and the ability to give off the impression you are thinking critically and analytically. Ventura absolutely nailed it, but who else ever has? Dusty was a good announcer? News to me.

Throughout wrestling history, there have been a lot of guys who are thought of as good talkers who then -- for logical enough reasons -- are given a spot as a colour commentator. However, what often happens is that said guy with a career of fantastic promos behind him absolutely sucks in the announce booth. 1. What are some of the best examples of this? We all know about Billy Graham and Dusty Rhodes, but trying to unearth some less obvious ones. Maybe they only spent a few matches on colour, or maybe they were on a C-show. 2. Why should this happen so often? In theory, announcing is not so far removed from promos: you are trying to get key points across while getting the promotion and angle you're working across ... it's not a million miles away. Discuss

For what it's worth, I think the Mania X ladder match with Razor holds up a lot better than Russo-era spot monkey stuff like TLC matches featuring Edge and Christian vs. The Hardy Boys, which -- if you recall -- at the time were raved about as being 5-star affairs. The Mania X ladder match is not spotty and it is worked smartly and believably.

Yeah, it's a real frustration. Heard so many shoots that are wasted opportunities.

Just seems like Sheik, Honkytonk Man, and Cornette over and over and over again to me. Feels like there was a shoot explosion around 2003-4 sort of time where most major guys did one, and that in the last few years they've either been scraping the barrel or having guys do their 2nd, 3rd, 4th or even 10th shoot. Last good one I can remember was probably the massive Flair one with the chewing tobacco.

Have there been any good shoot interviews in the past 4-5 years?

I've said this before, but for me DX is the most embarrassing thing in the history of wrestling. I can barely watch DX footage, just makes me cringe -- at David Brent in The Office levels.

I take it one step further Loss: you can draw a straight line from Andre turning on Hogan in the build for Mania III to, basically, Wrestlemania V. From the Andre feud, to DiBiase buying the belt and the evil twin refs, the tournament at Wrestlemania IV and the "out of nowhere" rise of Savage to the Mega Powers through Summerslam 88 and the slow slow breakup over the course of the Twin Towers feud. It's 2 years of SENSATIONAL booking from 87-89. There are subtleties too: Andre was still sort of respected at Wrestlemania III, someone led astray by Heenan, by the time he's selling the belt to Ted he's a total dick heel. Back to Rumble 89 though, why not send Bossman or DiBiase over there? Is it just Vince's pathological belief in never putting heels over and sending the fans home happy? DiBiase could have done with a rub there after losing some heat over the second half of 88 after the Savage feud died down. It was setup for him to win - he'd bought the number 30 slot. After being screwed over at Wrestlemania IV, you'd think they'd throw one of their major stars a bone or something. Hell, I could even see a case for putting Dino Bravo or Rick Martel over in that show ahead of Studd. What possible plans did they have for Studd in 1989?

Did anyone mention Studd winning the 89 Rumble? Think about all the possibilities for that show and what they went with. DiBiase or Bossman could have gone over, or Akeem even. The Hogan stuff could have happened last instead of 10 minutes before the end killing the crowd. Of all the people in that rumble, Savage, Warrior, even Andre, the biggest WTF is that Studd was the actual winner.

I was just about to make a thread about Tunney asking how much backstage pull he actually had when I clicked on this. I've heard some people say Tunney was an idiot. And it was a favour to his brother.

Why was Tito still wearing Strike Force gear in 1990? Think he was just so aimless for most of his WWF career after his time as IC champ basically. Even the big feud with Martel never really got a big blow off or any sense of closure, almost like for years the only meaningful thing Tito had to do in the year besides tagging with Virgil and getting his ass kicked was go for Martel at the Royal Rumble. I know Tito has a lot of fans here, but no matter how good he was as a fired-up babyface, if the booking just isn't there for you, what does any of it matter? Can't think of a single interesting thing Tito did after 1986.

Bix - that's one of the most informative posts ever made on a wrestling board. Thanks a lot, I'll try to adjust the OP to reflect your changes soon.

The 30-minute hype show on the Coliseum Home Video hosted by Sean Mooney does a wonderful job of summarising that build. Believe that was Mooney's last assignment, but it's arguably his best and THE BEST 30-minute countdown show ever. I watched Mania's 4-9 over and over as a kid, and I liked that 30 minutes of build more than the card itself.

I think the build to the Perfect-Luger match at Mania 9 is often neglected or forgotten as being quite great. Luger was good as The Narcissist and Perfect was just cool as a reasonably well-liked but still arrogant face. Face Perfect almost feels like a prototype for Pillman at times.